More Samsung Galaxy S4 details and images surface ahead of launch

Like most smartphone releases, details surrounding the Samsung Galaxy S4 are pouring in from every direction just before the official unveiling this evening. More information about the international (or at least the Chinese) variant of the phone have popped up, this time bringing higher quality photos, components details, and videos of the headlining features for Samsung’s next flagship Android smartphone.

There’s been no shortage of whispers surrounding the Samsung Galaxy S4 and its suspected innards, though the sheer volume of rumors breeds doubt that most of them are true. Samsung’s Galaxy line has grown popular enough that the first wave of renders and specs that “leak” are often little more than wishlists from fans eager to see their favorite manufacturer deliver the best possible product for the coming year. The Galaxy S4 is upon us nevertheless, and while it may not have a lock on being the best phone of 2013, what we know about it so far assures that it will be a highly sought after handset.

From previous leaks of Chinese models and a sneak peak from Samsung earlier in the week, we know that the front of the Galaxy S4 will be nearly identical to its predecessor. The Galaxy S3 is hands-down the best selling Android phone to have ever been made, so it would be silly to mess with that design if you don’t have to. Today more images and video emerged, giving expectant fans a nearly completely look at what seems to be a variant of the GS4.

There are some subtle differences to the casing, since the 4.99-inch screen is a slight increase over the 4.8-inch found in last year’s Galaxy S3. The increase in size is matched by a drastic increase in resolution, bringing the often rumored 1080p SAMOLED+ screen to replace the previous 720p screen. The added screen size and extra 500mAh found in the battery make the GS4 an imperceptible 5 grams heavier, but will also be a full millimeter thinner than the Galaxy S3.

As if the display and battery weren’t impressive by themselves, it’s being reported that the Galaxy S4 will pack a tri-core PowerVR 544MP3 GPU alongside the previously unearthed sort-of-but-not-really octo-core processor. The Exynos Octa has eight physical cores, split between four Cortex-A15 and four Cortex-A7 cores. The big.LITTLE setup here is designed to allow the more powerful cored to handle any heavy lifting that needs doing, while the less powerful cores handle low power tasks like garbage collection. This is the first Android phone to deploy this setup, and while the concept suggests that there will be significant gains in battery life there’s yet to be any significant real world testing.

Samsung won’t win the hearts and minds of the world on hardware alone, and just like last year it looks like the company is stuffing their TouchWiz flavor of Android with a ton of features that you can only find on their phones. We’ve heard plenty about the ability to use your eyes to control the phone, and now there’s a video of one such behavior in action. If you are watching a video on the Galaxy S4 and you look away from the screen, Samsung’s Smart Pause will pause the video without any commands from the user, and will begin playing again once your face is detected by the front facing camera. Like many of Samsung’s features, SmartPause is likely something that you’ll have to activate and it is unlikely to work in apps like YouTube and Netflix.

We’re looking down the home stretch for Samsung to officially pull the curtain off of this phone, and if history is any indicator there’s going to be plenty to talk about tonight. Samsung’s Galaxy S3 was widely considered the first Android phone to ever be able to compete with the iPhone one on one, and Samsung’s Galaxy S4 has some pretty big shoes to fill as a result.